THE CHOICE OF HERACLES 



THE 

CHOICE OF HERACLES 



AN ADDRESS 

BEFORE THE LITERARY SOCIETIES OF 

HAMPDEN-SIDNEY COLLEGE 



BY 

FAIRFAX HARRISON 



JUNE 10, 1913 



m 



V ^V 






THE CHOICE OF HERACLES 



"To the entent that I wyll declare ho we gouernours of 
realmes and cities may be prepared, 1 will use the policie of 
a wyse and counnynge gardener: who purposynge to haue 
in his gardeine a fyne and preciouse herbe, that shulde be to 
hym and all others repairynge thereto, excellently comodiouse 
or pleasant, he will first serche throughout his gardeyne where 
he can finde the most melowe and fertile erth ; and therein 
wil he put the sede of the herbe to growe and be norisshed." 

Sir Thomas Elyot. 

It is our pride to term Virginia conservative, not, as some 
Philistines connote the word, with an intendment of what 
is behind the times, but with a congratulatory apprecia- 
tion that here are a people alive to all the real progress of 
the age in which we live, but still clinging with respect to 
that concept which spells patriotism — the subordination of 
the individual to the community under equal laws. Here, 
as in few parts of our broad United States, men still 
regard that as good which their fathers did because their 
fathers did it. We live at the end of an old era as well as 
at the beginning of a new. We can still look back with 
perspective while our eyes are beginning to reflect the light 
of vision of the future. With this great privilege of imme- 
diate contact with a background of which we can well be 
proud, surrounded by the stately relics of a race which 
moved slowly perhaps, but was guided more by principle 
than by sentiment and emotion — a race which none dares 
contemn, but all gentlemen are bred to honor— it is fitting 

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that Virginia should equip her sons for the contests of the 
new life with whatever is best in the tradition of the past ; 
that we should pass on the torch our forefathers passed to 
us, if it still illuminates, as I shall to-day try to maintain 
that it does. 

Our modern creed tells us that those who laid the foun- 
dation of our nation demanded too large a sacrifice of the 
inherent rights of the individual to the general good of the 
commonweal; that for all the fine French philosophy of 
the Declaration of Independence, the government which 
resulted from it was rather a government of Man than of 
men and women; in fine, that it gave opportunity for the 
very things it sought to overthrow— the growth of classes 
and special privilege. In our reaction it may be ques- 
tioned whether we are not going too far in our concern for 
the Individual, and whether a modicum of that kind of 
education which formed the principles of the Fathers 
might not teach us that, after all, the rights of the Indi- 
vidual conservatively might ever be subjected to such 
limitation as sentimentality cannot be expected to appre- 
ciate, but which wisdom, founded on a knowledge of hu- 
man history, and indeed of Nature herself, can safely 
impose. One is reminded of a philosophical observation 
by Darwin : 

"Perfect equality among the individuals composing the Fuegian 
tribes must for a long time retard their civilization. As we see 
those animals whose instinct compels them to live in society, and 
obey a chief, are most capable of improvement, so it is with the 
races of mankind. Whether we look at it as a cause or a conse- 
quence, the most civilized always have the most artificial govern- 
ments." 

There have been three previous periods in the history 
of the world when men, in reaction against the tyranny of 
classes or of states, were actuated by that high passion of 

4 



idealism for the individual which breathed through the last 
inaugural address which has come to us from the Capitol 
in Washington. The literature of Greece reveals a moment 
when men were freeing themselves from the grip of the 
state and seeking an unrestrained expression of individual 
rights, with the privilege to discover and to explore them- 
selves. It is no longer the age of iEschylus, finding its 
catharsis in the poet's rehearsal of the fortunes and feel- 
ings of kings and prophets and princely heroines — it is the 
age of Euripides the disintegrator, who searched the heart 
of personal experience and gave a poignant expression to 
what he discovered. He in turn yielded the stage to 
Menander and the unheroic emotions of Everyman in the 
New Comedy, just as Browning has given way to Bernard 
Shaw. 

Again, at the end of the splendid history of the Roman 
Republic, man sought once more to live for himself and no 
longer for the state. Literature ceases to be epic in the old 
Greek sense; it has become personal, esoteric. Catullus 
plays upon our own private experience as freshly as the 
Lydian waters still laugh on Sirmio, to-day as when, re- 
turning from Oriental wanderings, he came once more to 
his beloved Lago di Garda. But chiefly do we find the 
new note in Virgil — no longer the stern, compelling 
eloquence of Ennius, but a sweet sentimentalism which a 
school-girl can understand. 

Once more, at the close of another age — that of feudal 
Europe — do we find men considering intensely the rights, 
and even more the wrongs, of the individual. We are 
taught to look upon the defense of Calas by Voltaire as 
psychologically the highest moment of a great career of 
illumination. 

It is perhaps unnecessary to suggest that each of these 
periods of divagation of the interests of the citizen from 
those of the state was followed by a subjugation of the 

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dearest of all individual rights— that of political liberty; 
that Philip and his son put out forever the lamp of Greek 
liberty; that Augustus destroyed the fabric which more 
than anything material represented "the grandeur that 
was Rome" ; that Napoleon crushed during a cruel hour a 
nascent national independence. It is equally unnecessary 
to deduce from what has been said that individuals find 
their freest expression only under personal tyranny, which, 
depriving them of concern in the welfare of all, diverts 
them to a private fingering and fondling of their own 
souls. It is enough to realize that we are living to-day in 
another such age of dissent from the standards of the past ; 
that our literary prophets drive home disillusion in order 
to make us modern — Ibsen, behind the leering mask of 
comedy, with the same clairvoyance as moved Erasmus or 
Lucretius. 

Our search is, then, for a gospel which each of us may 
interpret as authority for the freest choice of moral stand- 
ards ; and we hurry through all beliefs, dissecting as we go 
those which have been held in the most sacred esteem. We 
seek natural explanations of those dear prejudices which 
have moved men to wonder and secret sympathy through 
countless ages, and what was religion has for some become 
merely mores, taboos, sun myths— an interesting subject 
for research, but no longer a restraint of conduct. 

And so our modern system of education, discontent 
with the studies which have moved men to high and noble 
endeavor, prescribes in place of them a pabulum of applied 
science — the most reasonable, as it is the most dreary, of 
the utilities of the modern world. We hear accepted lead- 
ers of opinion insist that we shall no longer waste our time 
with building of character; that the true end of education 
is to sharpen our wits for the conflict of life, to arm our- 
selves with weapons of immediate use. 

All the cry of the schools is of vocational education. The 

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lad who has learned to read is to begin, forsooth, at once to 
prepare himself for a trade or even a profession. To study 
the classics, to drink inspiration at the fountains of the 
past, is no more profitable, we are told, than the efforts of 
Tantalus to slake his thirst. I do not mean to suggest that 
vocational education is without its uses — far from it: but 
that among such men as I am addressing to-day it might 
well be confined to the individual whose bent of mind dis- 
covers a probable career as a technician. Even if a man is 
eventually to specialize, he is a sounder man if he does so 
on a solid foundation of tradition. Vocational educa- 
tion as. a system for all is what I deplore. It is a sage 
counsel only for the industrially inept, for wage-earning 
mechanics at the highest, but most necessary shall we say 
for the negro — not for potential leaders of men. The trail 
of it is, however, everywhere evident, even in our higher 
schools and colleges, with the result that we are breeding a 
race of average men whose education operates like a labor 
union to deprive the best of the opportunity of his natural 
equipment, and to reduce efficiency to a level attainable by 
the incompetent. This is responsible for the most-to-be- 
regretted type in our industrial life to-day — the man in 
authority who is merely an official, competent to enforce 
rules, diligent, earnest, faithful it may be, but incapable of 
imagining new things. 

With all deference to current opinion to the contrary, I 
believe with old Sir Thomas Elyot that proper education 
for holding places of authority is as vital to the welfare of 
the state as the education of the many. As we are now 
facing new and fundamental questions of politics, of social 
science and economics, there was perhaps never a time 
when, as a nation, we more required leaders of poise and 
self-restraint, capable of bringing to the solution of the 
new the experience of the old, not that they may solve these 
questions only as they have been solved in the past, not 

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that they may resist the pressure of the new, but that they 
may be able to choose what is sound and avoid what is 
merely specious. 

I yield to none in admiration of the man who knows — 
the man equipped with modern science; but I venture, 
nevertheless, to assert that without background, as he too 
often is, he may be a narrow man, and in very truth plays, 
after all, but a small part in the world. He cannot move 
men to action — he can only facilitate their poor material 
and human convenience, which breeds more wants than it 
satisfies; he cannot stir the heart to singing — he can only 
reckon its pulsations. 

My appeal is, then, to a view of life which will take ac- 
count of the past as well as of the future, in education as 
in the conduct of affairs for which education is the prepara- 
tion. The objection is often made to that kind of 
equipment which is founded largely upon study of the 
humanities, that such a man enters life a mere amateur. 
He knows nothing useful, and so, it is said, he is unfit for 
industry, which in our age and in our civilization is the 
chief end of life, and so of education ; that, for example, in 
international commercial competition he is putty in the 
hands of a technically trained German. I venture, how- 
ever, to maintain the thesis that a man with a literary 
education is as well equipped to lead the industrial world 
as is a vocationally educated physicist or mechanical en- 
gineer of similar natural parts and character. It is a 
familiar experience in industry, as it is practised to-day, to 
see the man who has little or no special training in science 
—indeed, alas! sometimes little education of any kind out- 
side of the school of experience— leading successfully 
some great industry, solving its problems with full use of 
all the mysteries of applied science, and reaping the re- 
wards of power and honor which come with successful 

8 



leadership. How he does this is not far to seek. He hires 
the specialist as he requires him, and that too, unfor- 
tunately for current educational theory, usually at a com- 
paratively small wage. He does not himself need to know 
what others can tell : he can use technical men as he uses a 
table of logarithms. But, for leadership in its largest 
aspect, he does need a personal and ever available equip- 
ment of high principle, courage, both moral and physical, 
and imagination — qualities which are native in some char- 
acters, but may be cultivated in most through touch and 
contact with the thoughts and minds of the great souls 
who have by those qualities achieved great deeds in the past 
— that immortal company the tradition of whose acts or 
words constitutes the body of literature which we term the 
classics. 

I urge, then, upon those who would lead in industry, as 
in other conflicts of life, to build character and imagination 
by the study of the humanities. It is, however, no easy 
school that I counsel, no promenade or pasear through the 
contemporary literature of predigested knowledge — the 
books about books— which crowd our libraries, the ancient 
history drugged with modern politics, not Grote and 
Mommsen, but Thucydides and Tacitus. I summon him 
who would know and understand 

"the springs 
Of wonder, and the wisdom of the world," 

back to the sources, to the originals in all ages, that by the 
very labor of the search the knowledge may be more se- 
curely gained and taste the sweeter in achievement. He 
has weary days and straining nights before him, but he 
has deathless privilege, the communion with great souls. 
Scholarship in its technical sense is not now my subject. 
It is not the life of an Oxford don, nor of a German privat- 
docent, that I hold up to the emulation of a young Amer- 

9 



ican who would become a captain of industry. The life of 
a Scaliger, a Casaubon, a Bentley would be an anachro- 
nism in our teeming world of industry. But from such as 
these there is much more than scholarship to learn. Be- 
cause their tools are those I recommend to him who would 
know how to lead men, and because their methods are those 
of the painful endeavor which alone yields enduring suc- 
cess in any form of human enterprise, their lives may be 
our inspiration as we read the books which their labors 
have made readable. Here, for example, is Joseph 
Scaliger pleasantly pictured for us by his great contem- 
porary Casaubon, ever debonair in the use of his hard- 
won learning : 

"A man who, by the indefatigable devotion of a stupendous 
genius to the acquisition of knowledge, had garnered up vast stores 
of uncommon lore. And his memory had such a happy readiness 
that, whenever the occasion called for it, whether it were in con- 
versation or whether he were consulted by letter, he was ready to 
bestow with lavish hand what had been gathered by him in the sweat 
of his brow." 

So it is that true classical study can never be dilettan- 
tism. "Not without dust and heat" may one obtain a 
literary education which may serve in the practical life to 
come. I will take the liberty of illustrating my point by a 
version from one of the books I recommend. It is the 
old, old parable of the joy which comes in work, as Prodi- 
cus the Sophist wrote and polished and read it to number- 
less audiences of young Greeks in the great fifth century, 
and was commended therefor by Socrates. Its moral is 
to-day no less pertinent than is its charm of expression, 
though the full measure of that charm must, indeed, be 
sought in the Greek original. It is the parable of The 
Choice of Heracles. 

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"When Heracles was emerging from boyhood into the bloom of 
youth, having reached that season in which the young man, now 
standing upon the verge of independence, shows plainly whether 
he will enter upon the path of virtue or of vice, he went forth into 
a quiet place and sat debating with himself which of these two 
paths he should pursue ; and as he there sat musing, there appeared 
to him two women of great stature which drew nigh to him. The 
one was fair to look upon, frank and free by gift of nature, her 
limbs adorned with purity and her eyes with bashfulness ; sobriety 
set the rhythm of her gait, and she was clad in white apparel. The 
other was of a different type: the fleshy softness of her limbs 
betrayed her nurture, while the complexion of her skin was em- 
bellished that she might appear whiter and rosier than she really 
was, and her figure that she might seem taller than nature had 
made her ; she stared with wide-open eyes, and the raiment where- 
with she was clad served but to reveal the ripeness of her bloom. 
With frequent glances she surveyed her person, or looked to see if 
others noticed her ; while ever and anon she fixed her gaze upon the 
shadow of herself intently. 

"Now when these two had drawn near to Heracles, she who was 
first named advanced at an even pace towards him, but the other, 
in her eagerness to outstrip her, ran forward to the youth, exclaim- 
ing, 'I see you, Heracles, in doubt and difficulty what path of life 
to choose ; make me your friend and I will lead you to the pleasant- 
est road and the easiest. This I promise you : you shall taste all of 
life's sweets and escape all bitters. In the first place, you shall not 
trouble your brain with war or business ; other topics shall engage 
your mind; your only speculation, what meat or drink you shall 
find agreeable to your palate; what delight of ear or eye; what 
pleasure of smell or touch; how you shall pillow your limbs in 
softest slumber ; how cull each individual pleasure without alloy of 
pain; and if ever the suspicion steal upon you that the stream of 
joys will one day dwindle, trust me, I will not lead you where you 
shall replenish the store by toil of body and trouble of soul. No ! 
others shall labor, but you shall reap the fruit of their labors ; you 
shall withhold your hand from nought which shall bring you gain. 
For to all my followers I give authority and power to help them- 
selves freely from every side.' 

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"Heracles, hearing these words, made answer : 'What, O lady, is 
the name you bear?' To which she : 'Know that my friends call me 
Happiness, but they that hate me have their own nicknames for 
me — Vice and Naughtiness.' 

"But just then the other of those fair women approached and 
spoke : 'Heracles, I too am come to you, seeing that your parents 
are well known to me, and in your nurture I have gauged your 
nature; wherefore I entertain good hope that if you choose the 
path which leads to me, you shall greatly bestir yourself to be the 
doer of many a doughty deed of noble emprise ; and that I too shall 
be held in even higher honor for your sake, lit with the lustre shed 
by valorous deeds. I will not cheat you with preludings of plea- 
sure, but I will relate to you the things that are according to the 
ordinances of God in very truth. Know then that among things 
that are lovely and of good report, not one have the gods bestowed 
upon mortal man apart from toil and pains. Would you obtain 
the favor of the gods, then must you pay these same gods service ; 
would you be loved by your friends, you must benefit these friends ; 
do you desire to be honored by the state, you must give the state 
your aid ; do you claim admiration for your virtue from all Hellas, 
you must strive to do some good to Hellas; do you wish earth to 
yield her fruits to you abundantly, to earth you must pay your 
court ; do you seek to amass riches from your flocks and herds, on 
them must you bestow your labor; or is it your ambition to be 
potent as a warrior, able to save your friends and subdue your 
foes, then must you learn the arts of war from those who have the 
knowledge, and practise their application in the field when learned ; 
or would you e'en be powerful of limb and body, then must you 
habituate limbs and body to obey the mind, and exercise yourself 
with toil and sweat. . . . Toils like these, O Heracles, son of noble 
parents, it is yours to meet with, and, having endured, to enter 
into the heritage assured you of transcendent happiness.' " 

These are immanent lessons of success in a selfish world, 
but the fierce joy which comes of consciousness of work 
well done is not the only reward of him who builds his 
character upon the humanities. He who equips himself 

12 



for life with an education of science, but with "small Latin 
and less Greek," what is his intellectual resource in his 
hours of ease and divertisement? If he is a banker, like 
Sir John Lubbock, he can doubtless amuse his leisure with 
ants and bees; but if he is an entomologist for his liveli- 
hood, he cannot reasonably expect diversion in banking as 
an avocation: it is probable that the Comptroller of the 
Currency might intervene with an awful veto. But he 
who has founded his career upon a study of the great dead 
whom we term the classics, has not only a fund of experi- 
ence and tradition of achievement to guide and stimulate 
his workaday life, but, when work is done, he has a sweet 
well of imagination to dip into, vastly to be preferred to 
the muck of a modern literature of unrest and sordid dis- 
content. He may betake himself to that wonderful isle of 
the poet's conjuring, there to invite his soul and refresh his 
faculties. He, too, can live in Arcady. 

"And I have fitted up some chambers there 
Looking towards the golden Eastern air 
And level with the living winds, which flow 
Like waves above the living waves below. 
I have sent books and music there, and all 
Those instruments with which high Spirits call 
The future from its cradle, and the past 
Out of its grave, and make the present last 
In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, 
Folded within their own eternity." 

Gentlemen of the Literary Societies of Hampden-Sid- 
ney College: It was eighty-seven years ago, this week, 
that my grandfather had the honor of addressing your 
grandfathers here. I understand that he then maintained 
eloquently, from another point of view, the thesis which I 
have to-day attempted to maintain in the colder light of 
our contemporary life. That in the midst of our kaleido- 

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scopic social and economic conditions it is possible for an 
American of this generation to find himself in substantial 
intellectual agreement and sympathy with his grandfather 
on such a question is due, I believe, in no small measure to 
the steady influence of such institutions of sound learning 
as Hampden-Sidney College. I felicitate you as her sons, 
and I wish for your Societies a long continuance of the 
prosperity and ennobling aspiration which owes its vitality 
to so benign an alma mater. 



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m 28 1913 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 , 598 I, 501 I 7 I 



